THIS STUFF IS NOT EASY
marcelle19
Posts: 171
in New Users
THIS STUFF IS NOT EASY
I have gone through the QUICKSTART GUIDE tutorial several times now - but not all the way. It keeps resetting when I get part way through - usually around LIGHTS.
Wondering if I can get the hang of this stuff.
Any suggestions are welcome.
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well I wrote this tome https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/10835/somethings-to-consider-when-starting-to-learn-cg/p1 back in 2012. Obviously software changes over time but I think it is pretty relevant now still. Basically is says learning this stuff doesn't come easy, to some it maybe more intuitive but never easy IMO. Perseverance and a wanting to learn helps big time. First you need to ask yourself what you want out it it, for me I do for the fun and do it for myself. I don't want a particular style so I did tried all sorts of things. What type of images do you want to make realistic of what I call more art worthy images, cartoon, fantasy etc.
One thing that seems to be present in a lot of newbies, (me included), is the desire to make images like we see in galleries, dA, Artstation etc and go boy that is cool I want to do that. Not realizing it can take a good number of years to get to a level where one can make those types of cool pics.
You may have seen them already, but Daz has some video tutorials which may be helpful: https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-daz-3d-video-tutorials
Some people don't go very deep into the mechanics, and that's fine. But it might be an idea to explain what... sorts of things interest you right now, today. Animal, vegetable, rocks, alien figures, vampires that don't cast a shadow... you can make still pictures, or frames for animated sequences... it's all doable.
There are several different approaches to "lighting", and different ways of "previewing" the result of the light(s) or the lighting method that you have chosen in, say, DAZ Studio. Further to this there are different ways of rendering your scene and figures or objects (a tank, a car, an airplane, a tree etc.) And the "light" you are using may cast shadows - or not.
To begin with, or for starters you will probably be moving various objects around in a scene. The objects are made of polygons. The simplest object is a 6-sided cube - that's six polygons or faces. The long edges are called exactly that - edges, and the "points" are called verteces.
In DAZ Studio you can move and rotate the objects and they may be stretched and flattened and so on - so a cube can be a pizza box or a skyscraper - the choice is yours. In DAZ's Hexagon modelling program the focus is more on altering the geometry by (say) sub-dividing polygons and altering the position of verteces.
Hope this was helpful... without more data it's hard to know where to begin.
I'm trying to move hands and arms and fingers to grasp things and turn towards the model, but I wonder if I can even do that with the base models.
Maybe I have to get some new assets?
Also, opening and closing the mouth doesn't even seem to be an option with the base models. The tutorials I've been trying don't seem to have such functions - but it might well be I just don't know what I'm doing yet. Playing around with things instead of doing the tutorials seems to work to some extent, but if anybody has some suggestions, that would be great.
By the way, if I double posted again, sorry. I couldn't find the first new discussion I posted. Maybe I didn't hit POST DISCUSSION and it was lost. New to this whole 3D rendering thing, and also posting to forums.
Just posted another comment, and finally found this one. Sorry for the double posting. The one I posted says more of what I want to do - render images of people with their arms and legs and hands and mouths moving (not animated - sequencial still 3D images - animation is way off). I saw a guy smoking a cigar in one of the previews when I downloaded DAZ STUDIO - that looked pretty cool - and others holding things in their hands - that's kind of the stuff I want to do.
Thanks for the answers - I appreciate it. I will check out the things you all posted, but at least now I posted what I am aiming at - working with human figures.
EDIT: It's been a looooong time since I posted on forums. I thought I would just add to this rather than flooding the forum with post after post.
Thank you, Szark.
Looks like I have a lot of reading to do. I bookmarked that thread.
Thanks to everyone who posted too - you are all so helpful - something I missed from my old forum days.
I am getting a bit of the hang working with people - although I have no idea what to do with AA, AH, ER, etc. yet.
I am a bit overwhelmed at all the different controls that do the same thing, as well as those which do more. This is going to take a while. I learned PS back in the PS 5-7 days, and although I never mastered it, that was a snap compared to this 3D stuff.
I haven't even got to render yet - just working different settings for figures (need to get Elves, and Trolls, and Dwarves, and all that).
Thanks for bearing with me. I'll keep playing around and readiing these posts.
There are several ways of posing the character. And a number of tools to choose from. The tools can be found in the tools pane, just select one from the menu. The universal tool is pretty straight forward, with that selected you can simply grab a hand and drag it with the mouse, or rotate a body part using the gizmo in the upper right corner of your viewport. And if you select your character and look in the parameters pane, there are something called pose controls. Depending on what body part is selected there will be different options. So to open the mouth, select the head and look at the pose controls showing up. There should be an "open mouth" option, along with a number of other things.
I've never been able to do poses with the mouse. I use exclusively the control sliders in the "parameters" tab (which is on the lower right of the viewport by default) to pose characters. Everything you mention can be done with the base characters and assets. In fact, regarding posing, I don't think that there's anything you can't do with the basic installation but could do with other assets. For instance, an "expression" asset would give you acces to premade expressions, but you can make them yourself by changing the shape/position of the mouth, lips, eyes, brows, etc...with the basic installation.
I find DAZ counter-intuitive in many ways. Plus, there's just so much information to take in. You'll get there! Post specific questions to get answers.
I read a book about Mac programming some years ago where the preface said, approximately, "This stuff is actually complicated. You are not stupid. Be patient."
Well, my YouTube channel is made exactly for this reason :)
It's in my description if you're interested.
I strongly recommend participating in the new users monthly contest as well as reading the previous months contest threads as well. There is a lot of very good advice in there.
Thanks for the replies, all.
LenioTG
Thank you for the link to your youtube page. As I do better with written instuctions (and my internet is soooooo slow), do you have your tutorials available as written instuctions?
Another question. I got Photoshop CC (2019) just to have the functionality to be able to transfer images from DAZ Studio to Photoshop once I reach the stage where I can actually use PS to do touch-up after finishing what I can in DAZ.
However, I get this notice when I try to install the Photoshop 3D Bridge for DAZ Studio, and I have no idea where to go to set this up:
*Install Manager cannot find a required path. The package for "Photoshop 3D Bridge for DAZ Studio 4.11+ (Win 64-bit)" requires that the installed path for "Photoshop CC, CS6, CS5, CS4 (64-bit)" be defined. Make sure that a path for this application is present on the "Applications" page of the "Settings" dialog, then try again.*
Again, any help is appreciated. Thankss in advance.
P.S. - I have Windows10 Home 64 bit
I wasn't able to install the bridge to PS either, and I run a different version of DAZ on a different system. I just save the render as a TIF and open it in PS manually.
I finally figured it out after reading through some old documentation on one of the DAZ Help Wikis - you use the little gear in the Install Manager to navigate to
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2018\Plug-ins, then click Accept twice, close the Install Manager, and it should be done.
Thank you for your prompt answer, though. :) Everyone here seems so helpful.
You don't have to use Photoshop and the bridge, you can just save the rendered imaegs and open them in any image editor you like.
How do you get people to grasp things without those things disappearing partially or completely when you move and zoom the entire scene?
How do you get something to stay in the mouth, like a cigarette, cigar or pipe?
Regarding your second question : by parenting these things to the hand, mouth, etc.... In the "scene" panel that lists all the elements of your scene on the right, select the item and right click on it. In the menu, pick "Change "cigarette" parent". A new panel will appear, listing all the items, body parts, etc...in your scene. Click on what you want your item to follow, like for instance "left lip corner". and then "accept". The cigarette will now follow the moves of the character, head, lips...as if it were a part of the body.
I'm not sure what you mean by your first question. If a cigarette is near a hand, for instance, it will stay near the hand and still be visible when you'll zoom in on the hand. If however, it's nowhere close to the hand but say, one meter to the right and two meters in front of the hand, and just appears to be near the hand because of perspective, of course, it won't appear to be near the hand anymore if you change the perspective. The solution is then to make sure that things don't just *appear* to be close together, but actually *are* close together. I remember that for some reason, I had difficulties placing items actually where they were supposed to be in my very first renders, and relying on perspective instead (for instance, a cup wasn't really on the table near the hand, it just looked this way. In reality in was floating somewhere above the table, long away from the character), that's why I think this might be the problem you're refering to (and I can't begin to understand now why I had this problem, since it's way easier to place the item where it should be than finding a camera position where it looks like it is when it's not. I guess I had troubles manipulating props in space, maybe).
Yeah, I had that problem too and I still don't understand why things... work that way. It always reminds me of the Pan Am space clipper approaching the round space station in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think my spaceship is on target for "docking", but it's actually way off in the 3D space. Zooming out in the Top or Bottom view shows me just how off I am.
Just a thought though: I have DS 4.10 on one computer on which the Intel video chipset appears to be... not so great, compared to a computer with Nvidia graphics say. One of the worst symptoms is that 99% of the time NO figures or objects are visible in the Viewport. They briefly appear when I load them, or if I touch part of a figure or object with the Universal tool I'll see the object briefly, or I'll get a sort of "ghostly outline" showing the object's orientation, and then everything disappears again. Black screen.
Thanks for all your help. I still cannot get, say, a cigarette (or anything else) to appear in a hand as being held by that hand, whether by the fingers or in the palm or whatever. I've tried translate and other options. I know of some videos I can watch, but my internet is usually so slow that would be difficult most times.
If I'm still not clear, let me know how I can better describe what you believe I am trying to say, please.
How do I get a character (person) to grip a prop/another person?
When I have props and/or other figures inside a scene, I cannot get the right perspective for the people to grip props and/or other people. The props and/or other people just dissapear behind the first person. Like when I want the first person to just hold something on the palm of their hand, when I move that prop to the palm, it disappears behind the hand.
Been looking at tutorials - no help so far. Is there a PDF book that gives all the answers for newbie dummies like me? It seems what I want to do is simple enough, but like I said, newbie dummie.
I use the 'jump to' script my mCasual to get a prop to go to 'another place' - so at least it is nearby the required location (you can pick bones from a figure so a cigratte coudl be sent to a hand, etc.)
@marcelle19, based on your own description as a "newbie dummie," I'll start with the very basics. The image below is the upper right corner of the Viewport, where you can view the figure and prop. At the moment, I'm going to concentrate on the Camera Cube and the View Controls.
The Camera cube is the large mult-colored cube with the rings around it. In the image above, you can see the word Front on the blue side. Using your mouse, you can drag the cube to rotate the scene. If you hover the mouse pointer over the cube, you will see parts highlighted. Clicking on the highlight will move the cube, (and the therefore the scene,) to that position. Besides the faces of the cube, you can choose a corner, or an edge.
The View Controls to the right of the cube include, from top to bottom, Rotate, Pan, Zoom, Focus and Home. (Not sure what Daz calls them, but that's what they do.) Click and drag your mouse on Rotate moves you around the scene much like the Camera Cube, but doesn't have the "snap to" feature of the cube. Click and drag on Pan will move the scene up and down, left and right in the viewport. Click and drag on the Zoom will pull the scene closer to you, or push it further away.
With an object selected, clicking on Focus will center the object in the screen. And clicking on Home will return the scene to the default position.
Perhaps these are the tools you need to "get the right perspective" to pose your figure gripping a prop, etc.
If not, it would help if you could show us what you mean.
Daz Studio has an option under the File menu to "Save last Draw." Open your scene and rotate the viewport so we can see the entire figure and the prop. Save that draw and then zoom into the hand and prop for a close up, (about the distance you'd see in kid's school portrait picture,) and save that draw as well.
To share those pictures in the thread, create your post and then click on the Attach a file link below the Comment editor. That will add a button to Browse… Clicking on that button will allow you to browse to and select the image. To add a second or subsequent image, click on the Browse button again.
Something to check when you are parenting items to a figure or another prop is to go into the Scene Tab menu and make sure you have "parent in place" selected this makes sure that the item stays where you put it and doesn't jump around in the scene when you parent it!
Elli
Also take a look at L'Adai'rs suggestion in your other thread. It could be an issue of needing to change your point of view. If you're always looking from the same angle, things can look okay in the 2D view that you have at the moment, but as soon as you rotate to look from another angle they can be very far off. I do a lot of rotating/zooming/framing of things when I'm fine tuning a pose or making sure my character has a proper grip on the prop they have.
All that said, however, don't go crazy on it. Especially for static images. In the end, if what you get in your final image looks good, it doesn't really matter if it would look awful from another angle. For instance, I've had times when technically a sword hilt was digging into the character's palm. But from my main camera, it just looked like he had a good strong grip on it. So I didn't care that if you had been looking from the side it migh have looked like he impaled himself when he drew his sword. :)
P.S. You may want to ask the Moderators to merge your threads so that you don't lose L'Adair's very good explanation of using the camera controls!
Thank you for your quick response, L'Adair.
I'm trying to get a large female figure to grip a small male figure. Here is the image of the hand.
At this point, I think you need to select the male figure and move him into position. It isn't necessary for him to be parented to the hand at this point, and might be easier to move and pose if he isn't parented. Once you have him in place, you'll need to fine tune the female's grasp, selecting various finger joints and move them into place. It may also be necessary to tweak the male's pose and location as well.
Once you have both the male and female posed as you want them, be sure to parent him to her hand, so he'll move with her if you change anything. (For example, move her to another location.)
That's the part I'm having so much trouble with. When it seems he is in the right position, and I move the female's hand, fingers, they do not seem to grasp him so much as go over and/or through him.
I was on my other computer working on an example for you:
(Image should link to the larger image.)
I suspect you are using the Pose Controls for the hand to "grasp", but because 3D objects have no mass, there is nothing to stop her fingers when they get to the male, and they keep on going. To get her fingers to hold him firmly, but without going right through him, you are going to need to select the bones of each finger and bend, twist and move side-to-side as necessary to wrap those fingers around him, without intersecting. There are three bones for each finger, (four, if you're using G8 and count the Carpal bone.) Depending on how close her hand will be to the camera and at what angle, you can get away with some intersecting. As long as it looks correct in the camera. It's all about the end result.
And welcome to fun of posing!
Thank you - it seems to be a lot of learning the posing.